building a pc from scratch from donated parts! asus K8S mx motherboard, which requires a ddr Dimm, im using a sdram, would this cause the message "overclocking failed" it also tells me - Primary master- (SATA device not found) Secondary master - (SATA device not found). The motherboard came from a working computer, the hard drive, with win XP on it, from a different computer. It does show that it "auto detects" hard drive, dvd and cd drives,

The board uses 184-pin DDR-SDRAM (PC2100, PC2700, PC3200). 168-pin SDR-SDRAM (PC100, PC133) would not properly fit in the DDR slot because of the notches along the pin side of the module. If you were to force it in & fire it up, you would fry the RAM or board, or both....maybe even more. So I doubt you have "sdram". (BTW, it's ALL SDRAM). The "overclocking failed" message probably means you have your BIOS setup incorrectly. And the fact that you're getting "Primary master- (SATA device not found) Secondary master - (SATA device not found)" pretty much confirms it. If you're running an IDE HDD rather than an SATA HDD, you have to adjust the BIOS settings...you may also have to reset the jumpers on the drive. Also, you cannot pull a HDD with WinXP from another computer, install it, & expect it to work...it's configured for the other system. You'll either have to format & install XP from scratch, or you can attempt a "repair install". BTW, that's a crappy SiS based motherboard, but if you got it for free, I gues you can't complain. http://www.asus.com/products4.aspx?modelmenu=2&model=377&l1=3&l2=14&l3=149

thanx for the reply, just bought a new DDR, 512MB PC3200 (Hynix HY5DU12822CTP-D43), although the asus motherboard manual dos'nt have it listed in the compatability list, the shop assured me that its right (but didnt convince me!). Im using a 40-1 pin for the hard drive, which i presume means its IDE (did i mention im computer idiot!?) so how would i reset the bios, i see what you mean about the XP installed harddrive not being set up for it, the friend who gave me all the bits checked the HD by plugging in it to his current comp and it fired up no problems, i assumed since all the bits, motherboard included, came from him it would boot up fine for me aswell, whats the "repair install" option all about?? when i looked at the Bios setup it listed the HD, DVD/rw and CD/rw as being found?? fun and fustrating at the same time....